Footprints

God on the Ground - Day 1

Day 1 - Footprints

Click here if you prefer to listen

A few years ago, on the night before Thanksgiving, my family and I were sprawled out on the couch watching a movie.

My phone buzzed with a notification that a package had been delivered.

Calvin opened the door to grab it moments later, but the package was gone.

We paused our movie, peeked through the curtains, did our best impersonations of TV crime scene investigators. “Wet footprints on the porch!”

Huddled together around the phone, we watched the doorbell footage, wide-eyed. Out of the shadows, a woman emerged, eyes darting. Blond hair in a messy topknot. Victoria’s Secret PINK sweatpants. I recognized her from The Window, where I work part-time. I’d seen her around the neighborhood. She grabbed the package and scuttled up the street, less than one minute after it had been delivered.

First came the tremor of minor violation. Next, confusion over how to respond. There was the awe upon understanding her calculated system and the weight of imagining what drove her behavior.

And then there was the reality of what she took.

For all of her effort, she walked away with my brand-new Advent devotional. She stole the story of baby Jesus by the twinkling glow of Christmas lights strung across our porch.

It’s an easy punchline. We have learned the value of humor instead of bitterness whenever possible. But days later, I was still thinking about her.

~

Kelley Nikondeha writes in The First Advent in Palestine, “The Advent of God’s peace arrived as a grand reversal to challenge expectations about the shape of peace and to bring durable hope to hard times.”

Through outstretched nights, despairing days, and the unexpected flickers of pure joy, we wait for the arrival of that durable hope. We shop and we wait. We bake and we wait. We do our best to inject wonder and extract meaning, to draw nearer, to claw for some much-needed peace. We watch. And we wait.

All the while, life pulses around us. Tragedy and grief don’t relent just because it’s December. So often, they double-down. We’re well-acquainted with the jangle of accumulating stress and the yank of endless to-do lists. It’s Christmastime, and it’s still hard to be human. It’s hard for me. And it is hard for my top-knotted neighbor.

Maybe you relate?

Life on 5th Street has proven the futility of trying to separate my own experience from the experiences of my neighbors. Yes, one of them stole a book from my porch. But two days later, another delivered a steaming tray of birthday tamales.

And just yesterday a new neighbor I barely know quietly tapped on our door and passed the poinsettia of my dreams across the threshold. “This is from me and my wife,” she said. “We’re trying to be better neighbors.”

Desperation and generosity. Isolation and belonging. All of it leaves footprints.

We’re connected. In this together. Like it or not.

This was as true thousands of years ago as it is today. As Silas once described it, the birth of Jesus was the arrival of “God on the ground.” We read of Jesus putting on flesh and shoes and moving into the neighborhood. (John 1, The Message.) Who, then, were the unassuming neighbors to his arrival? What gifts did they bring? What harm did they render? What do they teach us?

What does it mean today, in our actual lives?

For the next nine days, we’ll gather here for a short reflection on the story within the story. Together, we’ll watch the streets and search the skies, waiting for Immanuel, hopeful we will notice the signs.

Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us’. Isaiah 7:14

---

If you would like to receive the full God on the Ground series, become a paid subscriber. The cost is just $5/month and it’s simple to cancel the subscription at the conclusion of God on the Ground if you’d like. (Better yet? Stick around! We have a lot over fun over at The “Secret” Soup.